Detention,
torture and freedom of women in South LebanonBy Kim
Ghattas, The Dawn 16th Aug 2000

AINATA, (South
Lebanon): It was a sunny day, a quiet Thursday. She was enjoying a late
lunch with her family when a car pulled up in the driveway and two men
asked her to accompany them to answer a few questions.

On September
2, 1999, Cosette Ibrahim, a 24-year-old journalist, was taken from her
parent's house, in the Christian town of Rmeich, to be questioned by Aql
Hashem, an officer in the South Lebanon Army and then commander of the
western sector of the Israeli occupied zone.

Hashem told
her that if she did not answer the questions in his office, she would be
taken to the dreaded Khiam, a prison controlled by the SLA with the tacit
agreement of the Israelis.

For the past
15 years, Khiam has been synonyms with fear, torture, and the violation
of human rights.

A bewildered
Cosette climbed into the car. It was not long before she realised that
they were, indeed, headed in the direction of the prison.

"Bizarrely
enough, there is a kind of relief, of giving in, at that moment. At least
you know where you're being taken, and you know there is nothing you can
do to fight it," recalls Cosette.

Cosette was
one of more than 3,000 people who were held at the infamous Khiam detention
centre.

Some were arrested,
after being caught passing information on to the Hizbollah, the guerrilla
group that spearheaded the war of liberation against Israel's occupation
of south Lebanon. Others were just suspected of doing so.

Some were even
held because of personal grudges. Thousands of lives were shattered and
families torn apart in the process."After refusing,
so many times, to provide him with information, I felt Youssef Hashem,
who was in charge of security in our village, had developed a grudge against
me. That was his revenge," said Sawsan Khanafer, 24 year old teacher, who
was taken to Khiam in Feb 2,000.

The Khiam detention
centre was set up by the Israelis in 1985. They were directly in charge
of it until 1987, when they handed control over to their allies, the SLA,
while still pulling the strings.

Pressure from
the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the Khiam centre
forced the SLA to improve detainment conditions. However, it took a year
before they allowed the ICRC to inspect the prison in Jan 1995.

Despite international
pressure, the torture methods continued unabated. Former inmates say these
included boots kicking every part of the body, electric rods applied against
humid bodies, hanging upside down on a pole, usually almost naked, baking
in the sun or drenched in the pouring rain.

Every day,
for 20 days, two women guards came to fetch Sawsan for her interrogation
session. A bag would be placed on her head and, handcuffed, she would be
dragged into a room where she would spend two hours in the morning and
two in the afternoon, under interrogation.

"The first
three days were okay, I was not beaten. (In fact)I (even) told my interrogator
I thought Khiam (would be) worse (than it was). He told me that was all
media exaggeration," said Sawsan.

"But then I
got (a) taste (of) how bad it could get," she adds. Sawsan was made to
kneel and hold a chair up in the air with her handcuffed hands for hours.
She was threatened with electrocution if she dropped it.

Every time
she felt herself faltering, Sawsan said she thought of the electric shock.
But, in the end, she couldn't help her body from collapsing. She was then
splashed with water and electric shocks passed through her fingers.

Kicks in the
face broke her nose and she developed an allergy all over her body which
became infected.

However, despite
the horrific ordeal, Sawsan maintains that she was lucky to be a woman.
She says the torture women were subjected to was several degrees lower
than what the men had to endure.

Sawsan says
she cried herself to sleep in her solitary confinement cell, where all
prisoners remain until the interrogation is over.

"The worst
for me was when they stopped coming to get me for interrogations," she
recalled.

After two months,
she was put in the same cell with another girl, Ismahan Khalil. They were
later joined by Cosette and Najwa Samhat, a mother of four, whose husband
and 19 year old son were detained at the same time.

The four of
them spent their last weeks of detention trying retain a positive outlook.
They knew that Israeli premier, Ehud Barak, had pledged upon his election
that he would withdraw from Lebanon by July 7. This was something to look
forward to.

And it came
sooner than expected.

On May 23 the
cries of "Allah Akbar" resounded in the courtyard of the detainment centre.
It was a cry they will always remember.

"We thought
maybe the SLA was killing the detainees as they left, but soon we saw from
the hole in the door, people swarming the prison and a man opened our door
with a crow bar," said Sawsan.

Nobody was
laughing, nobody was crying. They were all too stunned as realisation began
to slowly set in that they were finally free and that their worst nightmare
was over. Their prayers had been answered, Israel's 22 year long occupation
ended on May 24.

Cosette does
not regret her sojourn in prison. "In the end, it was thanks to our sacrifice
and of all the others that our country was finally liberated," she said.
All the detainees are slowly getting used to life and freedom again.

For Sawsan,
the new freedom is double, not only were they released from Khiam, but
their villages were also freed from Israeli occupation.

However, the
scars run deep. It will be some time before the people of south Lebanon
will learn to speak without fear.

"I learned
the price of freedom in the prison. Of course we were always free in our
minds in Khiam, but we also had been through 22 years of occupation and
constant fear, this shapes your attitude," she said.